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He is fourteen, with his back against the same radiator. This time, he's between it and a very heavy sofa. The common room is empty, apart from Mello.
Mello is kissing Matt.
Matt is kissing back.
It's the holidays, and any Wammy's kid with somewhere to go has gone there. Rodger is in town with Near and all the other well-behaved ones with nowhere to go. A misdemeanour that morning involving a water-butt and one of Cook's cats means that neither Matt nor Mello are allowed to join them. Instead they are confined in the house, alone, supposedly reflecting on what they have done and learning that bad behaviour doesn't pay off.
Needless to say, they're ignoring their orders.
What they are learning, however, is a lot more about each other.
Kissing Mello is like kissing a dragon, Matt thinks; all angles, lithe curves and bared teeth (these are currently occupied in the groove were Matt's neck meet his shoulder, making sure that every last of inch of him has melted into putty). It's been a long time since cuddling on the armchair, and a few clandestine internet searches have given them a good idea of what the next steps up entail.
Of course, in true Wammy's Kids style, they're proving themselves prodigies in every single level.
Mello isn't old enough to have tried leather yet, but Matt can still feel the warm, round muscles flex under his hands. His fingers drift across a flat white stomach. Mello groans into his mouth.
They're too young for this. Both of them know it and neither of them care. Wammy's kids are ten years ahead of average mentally, who could say that their hormones hadn't accelerated to match?
Matt certainly isn't complaining, his hands are exploring every contour he's dreamed about in the last year, and more he hadn't dared think about. Mello's yellow hair is in his face, tumbling down as he crawls deeper into Matt's lap. The musk of it sets his senses on fire.
'Matty Matty Matty.' Mello murmurs between kisses. 'Matty do you love me?'
"I wondered for years why you didn't answer me." Mello said slowly. His voice was quiet but his eyes stared straight into Matt's, unmoving, unblinking. "Got myself really fucked up over it. Didn't sleep. That was before all this though, before this place, where I can read your mind. Don't worry." Oh those eyes. Matt felt as though they were twin points of fire, scouring him right to the core. "I know now."
"You weren't exactly crystal clear either." Matt's voice was barely above a whisper. "The amount of things I did for you, just to make you smile, make you laugh."
I would have done anything for you. Anything.
He doesn't say it, but the thought hung in the air. Judging by the sudden sadness in Mello's eyes, he knew that he'd sensed the words without needing to hear them aloud.
"When you left…" The words are out before Matt had time to think, spilling from him like a terrible weight falling from his shoulders. "When you left, Mello, I…"
I couldn't stand it.
I couldn't speak, couldn't laugh, couldn't even eat. I moped for days, forgot my work, failed tests normal kids my age could pass. I almost died, Mello.
I think I did, in a way.
"Nothing." He said at last. "I was nothing, after that."
He is fifteen, lanky, awkward, his bad haircut crammed under a battered ushanka. It is half one in the morning.
He is sneaking out.
He lets himself out the back door and makes his way to where the garden wall is lowest and easiest to climb. The old cherry tree gives him enough shade to stay hidden from the house, but he can feel it watching him, old memories sighing, disappointed, in its leaves. The cold air bites his lungs; he has to spark up the moment his feet touch the ground on the other side. He's only been smoking a few months, since Mello left, but already the nicotine seeps like oxygen through his blood. Deadening. Delicious.
He reaches the churchyard in minutes, his breath rising in icy columns above his head. There's isn't a single house light on at this hour; he feels like the only living person in the world.
Mello is waiting in the shadow of the angel cenotaph, its wings casting sharp shadows across his face. He is tired; there are new lines beneath his eyes and at the corners of his lips. His smile is no longer easy.
He has never looked so beautiful.
Mello unpeels himself from the shadow as Matt approaches, his smile wry. He starts to say something but Matt is too quick, seizing him with the same animalistic sense of completion that he gets when sparking up, only one hundred thousand times stronger.
Nicotine is his drug. Mello is his lifeblood.
Mello curves into him like a cat rubbing against its master. They fold against the angel, losing themselves in each other's mouths, each other's hands. By the time they pull away Mello is breathing hard, and Matt's lips are starting to bruise. Matt's eyes are burning behind his goggles; it feels like something is breaking inside him, cracks running up every artery. In a moment he's going to fall apart, spinning away in pieces like a shattered teacup.
'I'm going to miss you, Matt.' Mello says.
'Don't do that.'
'What?'
'Don't call me Matt like you're going to leave.'
Mello smiles. His face looks like marble in the moonlight.
'But I am leaving.'
A rustle of pockets; a tiny oblong card, striped orange, held up so he can see. The ticket reads CHILD ONE-WAY. Mello has his thumb over the destination.
Matt memorises the serial number.
The train leaves in two hours.
"You should have covered up that serial number." Matt murmured as the picture melted away. "I tracked you for the next three years."
Mello barked out a laugh, tiny lines splitting his new, perfect skin.
"You thought I didn't know that?" He buried his head in his hands, his grin fixed, almost mad. "I fucking let you see that on purpose!"
"Then why cover up the destination?"
"Because it would have been a plea then, wouldn't it? 'Please Matty, come and fetch me, don't let me leave.'?" Matt stared at him.
"You mean you didn't want to?" Mello snorted.
"Wammy's hardly teaches you to fend for yourself. I'd aced twenty A-Levels and a PHD, but had no idea how to work a fucking washing machine. I wasn't exactly dying to go."
"But then…?"
"Because of Near." Mello scowled. "And L. He was dead, Kira was killing millions and I was expected to sit there and watch that little albino freak do some jigsaws? Screw that."
"You could have taken me with you."
"That was another reason why I left the serial number." Mello said, forcing Matt to look at him. "But you never bothered, so and I had to come and fetch you."
"And now you make it sound like it was my fault!"
"It was!" Mello snapped. "No one kissed me for three years, Matty, though God knows some of the bums I met wanted to. No one even knew my real name. I went without you, without L and Rodger and Watari, everyone I'd cared about, to go after Kira. The case, the mafia…it took everything." He paused, swallowing hard. "In the end, I had nowhere to go but backwards."
"Into my waiting arms." Matt finished, unable to keep the bitter note out of his voice. Mello broke off and shot him a sidelong glance.
"What, you're complaining?" he smirked "After all those intimate nights in front of a surveillance screen? Those Love Hotels? All that kinky make-up sex?"
Matt couldn't help it, he was laughing again.
"There weren't any Love Hotels, or enough make-up sex, and you know it."
"But what we had was good, right?" It had been meant as a joke, but neither of them mustered more than a smile. In the end, the case had consumed their whole lives, encompassing all needs but the most basic; food and sleep, and often not enough of either. Sometimes they had lived in shifts; not seeing each other for nights and days on end. But somehow, miraculously, there had been days when that had changed. Short hours, snatched kisses, never enough but almost. When Matt looked back on the Kira years these days were the ones that stood out, that glittered with life and colour, like gulps of oxygen to a slowly drowning man.
"Yes." Matt murmured after a while. "What we had was good."
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